Tag: Emotions

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Yikes! I am stuck parenting during the Pandemic. Where’s the Village?

The feeling of another COVID-19 day, with the news report of who is or who is not wearing a mask. Statistical unemployment reports and reports of how many people globally have contracted the virus along with deaths contributed to the virus. There is not a day that goes by that we don’t hear the word COVID-19. To top that off we are having to be parents 24/7 and be teachers at that.

Wait, let’s think about that. When we decided to go through with the pregnancy, gave birth and brought them home it became official. We were parents. I have children. All of which I homeschooled. No they did not wear matching outfits, I did not sew their clothes and we did not churn our butter. We were a military family and to promote continuity of education they were home schooled. Two of them were home schooled through high school while the other kids were home schooled into their high school careers.

Does homeschooling award me a badge of honor? No. Does it make me an expert on parenting. No. There is not a single person who is an expert. Our kids are individuals with no particular prototype. What homeschooling afforded me was an opportunity to get to know my kids learning styles, help them develop within their learning styles and give me chance to reparent myself.

Reparenting is giving yourself what you didn’t receive in your childhood. When an adult recognizes certain personality traits that are a result of faulty treatment in their childhood reparenting becomes a tool to makes requisite changes in the affected personality trait. In a healthy environment our caregivers were actualized people who allowed their children to develop uniquely as kids. Perhaps your parents were like so many others who were not self actualized and parented out of unhealthy models. My parents were both alcoholics and their was abuse in the home. My childhood memories are lost in the dep recesses of my unconsciousness. My parenting models came from watching the Brady Bunch. They were the only intact family I saw. There was my Three sons, but the mom was dead. Their was the Andy Griffith Show but that mom was not around. Their was the Partridge family. There was no dad. Good Times came a bit later. There was a mom and day and of course Dynomite!

What does reparenting and teaching our kids at home during the crisis have to do with one another? Well, being “stuck” with each other for prolonged periods of times tends to expose the true nature of self The true nature of self is rooted within the ego part of self. When you child starts to get on your nerves is it really about them or what part of self is being challenged.? What is the child doing that is awakening that part of self that doesn’t want to be bothered? How weren’t you tolerated as a child that now is being counter transferred onto your own child?

WE have been given a gift. Many of us have the challenge of working and being with our kids at home; yet, it is a gift of time which you can never gain back. Take the time to reparent yourself as you parent your child. Allow your child to make and process mistakes. Model how to delay gratification, work. Model how to achieve goals and do as a person with integrity. Model self compassion. Model and practice emotional intelligence by giving words to your own emotions and noticing where you feel them in your body. Model for your kids the ability to view yourself objectively from the perspective of others. Self reflect by examining situations without judgment. And practice and model the ability to be and be present. This isn’t an easy task. Parenting is not easy; however, it is an amazing call on your life. To be able to shape and cultivate a life that will be contributing citizens and overall good people.

We need more of those types of people. Let is start with your reparenting. Maybe this time isn’t so much about teaching kids academics. Perhaps it is about sizing the moment and allowing for curiosity to arise and experience your best life so that your family can experience their best lives yet.

Don’t hesitate to reach out for more help on how to reparent or how to parent during this time of crisis. You can do this with or without the Village.

Carpe Diem, Gloria

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Gratitude transformed into Salus Vita (My Best Life)

Gratitude. Gratitude is the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness. Gratitude is not simply an attitude; it is something that flows out of you from you. An attitude is a way of feeling or acting toward a person, thing, or situation. We can surmise that Gratitude has its roots in attitude; however, is cultivated by a feeling. This is where it gets tricky because feelings can lie to you and often do.

Feelings are an emotional state or reaction based on your subjective experiences. Our feelings don’t have to lie to us they are just doing their job. Our feelings are trying to protect us and are based on our previous experiences within the world we behold. Many things may produce a feeling response such as being in the moment, triggers from the past, worrying about the future, fantasies, not allowing ourselves to feel happy because we feel undeserving, paranoia, unresolved grief and pain, traumatic experiences, and the list goes on. There is no end to the amount of feeling (both positive and negative) that flows through our lives on a daily basis. How we can express gratitude in such a fallen world where feeling so often gets highjacked?

Slowing down the process. Don’t push away the negative feeling away simply notice the feeling without judgment. Shift into an attitude of gratitude then allow the attitude to manifest itself into your life. “Thank you I can feel.” “Thank you for this awareness.” “Thank you for time to be and creating space to be.” Gratitude will not change your situation. What gratitude does is to help us experience more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve our health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships.

13 Most Popular Gratitude Exercises & Activities [2019 Update]

Join me on a two week gratitude challenge. For the next 14 days when you wake and and when you go to bed say something you are thankful. Write these down daily. At the end of the week read all 14 cards aloud. Take your breathes in between and notice a life being transformed into your Best Life yet.

Carpe Diem,

Gloria

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Transforming my COVID Anxiety

Uncertainty is an inescapable part of life. At what point does uncertainty transform into Anxiety versus life transformation that brings on the “next” of our life’s journey? Anxiety is a response to perceived threat or danger which is felt by biochemical changes in the body that is supported by personal experiences that are undergirded by implicit and explicit memories. This memory bank stores up the feelings of the past which shapes anxiety into a feeling or augments the imagination of what might happen in the future. Does the difference between anxiety as a feeling versus anxiety as experience really matter?

Yes. It is the difference between feeling (being) and believing in that emotion. Feeling certainly is reminders that we feel although they may or may not be the truth. Try this ABCED technique for anxiety.

Attention: Sit with the anxiety and notice where you feel the emotion in your body. On a scale from 0 to 10 where 0 is no disturbance and 10 is the greatest disturbance. How does your anxiety scale? Now, notice where you feel the emotion in your body. How big does the emotion feel in that area of your body? Notice the intensity. Is there any warmth associated with where you feel it in your body? Is it a throbbing sensation or heavy lingering sensation? Just notice that sensation in your body without attaching a narrative. (Don’t give the anxiety a story. An example of attaching a story is telling yourself you feel this way because you might get COVID-19) . Notice the feeling in your body without justification. If it helps close your eyes. If not focus on the area in your body where you notice the emotion. Do this for about 2 minutes and take what I call 4/6/8 count breathes. Breathe in for 4 seconds, hold for 6 seconds, and breathe out slowly for 8 seconds. Do another scale check and notice what has happened to the emotion in your body. Repeat if the scale has not dropped to a manageable number.

Believe? Is this Anxiety believable (Based on logic) or based on an automatic thought process (Images or mental activity that occur as a response to a trigger). Sometimes our thoughts happen so quickly that we fail to notice them. Automatic thoughts fall into the following categories: Arbitrary Inference, Overgeneralization, Dichotomous thinking, Selective Abstractions, Magnification, Minimization, Catastrophic thinking, or Personalization. For the purpose of CORONA Virus, I would venture we tend to Overgeneralize, Have dichotomous thinking, Selective abstraction, Magnification, and or Catastrophize.

Challenge: Challenge the believability of the thought. What is the bigger picture? How might I think about this if I were calmer? Finally, think about the following quotes: “Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.” Epictetus. Don’t let your reflection on the whole sweep of life crush you. Don’t fill your mind with all the bad things that might still happen. Stay focused on the present situation and ask yourself why it’s so unbearable and can’t be survived.” Marcus Aurelius.

Discount the unbelievable thoughts which have been debilitating. Visualize them float into the air like a hot air balloon. Each word takes float. Practice your 4/6/8 count breathing three times.

Experience peace instead of Anxiety. This peace is in being and beholding the liminal space. Letting go of what was and availing yourself to what is next. We are a resilient people. We are a resilient Nation.

COVID-19 has ushered in change and awakened feelings of anxiety which are par to the course. Although we cannot control the anxiety from occurring my hope is that each of us uses the ABCDE techniques to quell to the emotion of anxiety instead of allowing the emotion to dictate how we are going to live out the COVID-19 crisis.

Carpe Diem,

Gloria

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Liminal Space

I learned a new word today during the virtual meditation class; Liminal. Thankful that these days we do most everything virtual I was able to look up the word while a discussion took place. Liminal is the transforming space between what was and the next. COVID-19 has thrust us into a Liminal Space. In this space the capacity for peace is present.

COVID-19 brings about many unknowns that activates fear. Am I going to be able to open up my business again? I am going to be able to pay the bill? How far behind will my kids get academically? Will my marriage last? Am I going to get sick? Will my loved one get sick? Will the person I know who is sick die? Will they find a cure? What will happen to our health care? How far will Social Distancing go? Will I have to become a Vegan or Vegetarian because of meat contamination? Questions go on and on and if you watch the news daily you notice questions continue to go unanswered and more questions are created.

Before COVID-19 we lived in a world was a place where we experienced life first hand. We felt the touch of another human being, we hung out together and laughed in real-time. We went to sporting events and cheered on our favorite teams. We went to happy hours, yoga classes, went to our places of worship, and met our neighbors.

COVID-19 has brought on a world of fear. Fear is justifiable in light of the pandemic; however, we do not want to allow fear to cast a shadow over our Liminal Space. The emotion of fear awakens the Amygdala (Fight, Flight, or Freeze response ) which triggers the hippocampus (where memory is stored) into activation which impacts the prefrontal cortex (decision making part of the brain). So we can say, A + H+ PC = Assess Threat after which we can understand if our fear response is based on reason or based on emotion.

Fear is a basic emotion such as is joy, trust, fear, surprise, sadness, disgust, anger, anticipation. Emotions are subjectively based and a reminder that we humans beings who feel. Notice the fear without a narrative and notice how your liminal space grows. This space allows for your journey to continue. The unknown has a great capacity for just that…to transform. The unknown can become anything. Our propensity is to think the unknown means something bad. The Buddhist saying it that, it is neither bad or good. It is.” That’s Liminal Space, a threshold of potential to continue on building a life of meaning and purpose despite the pandemic.

Martin Seligman, often regarded as the father of positive psychology, describes three paths to happiness: the Pleasant Life (Hollywood’s view of happiness), The Good Life (focused on personal strengths and states of “flow”), and the Meaningful Life. COVID-19 has stripped away the Pleasant life and has given each of us an opportunity to transform our lives into the Good Life and the Meaningful Life. If you have been living the Good and Meaningful life, hats off to you and may this time confirm your journey. For those of us we were getting caught up in the Pleasant life may our perspective be that of relishing in what money can’t buy or the ego can’t feed.

It is important to understand that the Liminal Space does not mean pushing away negative emotions or making as if a crisis is not occurring. The liminal space makes room for the inevitable states. If we learn to wait and allow for the Liminal Space our capacity to live out our best life yet will be materialized because we don’t fight against the inevitable. We approach crisis intentionally and rather than being paralyzed we boldly approach the space confidently being assured that beauty to come forth from the ashes. That life may not look as it did before COVID-19 yet it will be beautiful for beauty will come forth from the ashes.

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.”
― Rabindranath Tagore

Carpe Diem,

Gloria

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Really

I received a text today which  was surprising. The individual wrote an apology saying they let me down but the reason they let me down is because of the topic I kept bringing to the table. Really? I thought I was putting up with  that individual’s looping. That looping that keeps one stuck in a circular mental processing and challenges meta-cognition.

Meta-cognition is the capacity to think about what one is thinking. The prefrontal cortex is activated and problem solving, planning, awareness, learning and thinking is activated. Automatic thinking pauses ushering intentional thinking. Meta-cognition is similar to the Wise mind of the Dialectic Behavior Therapy (DBT) world.

Individuals, more often than not, use either emotions or logic to dictate behaviors.  Emotions are not necessarily reflective of  the veracity of the situation; yet, they are reality of feeling in that moment. When solely going on emotions, which  are subjective, no regard is given to the reasonable way of understanding. Logic looks at fact without emotive sway keeping things black and white. Logic is objective and void of instinctive or intuitive perspectives. When Emotional thinking is merged with Logic thinking we birth the Wise mind. The Wise mind is the neurological balance of the limbic system (Emotional Mind)  and pre frontal cortex (Reasonable Mind).

Image result for dbt wise mind

As babies we are born with primary emotions of fear, happiness, sadness, and anger. As we grow secondary emotions, emotions that we learn from our primary caregivers are formed. Shame is an example of a secondary emotion which is rooted in one’s belief system. Examples of other secondary emotions are: disgust, guilt, embarrassment, and cynicism.

Just a note that for those of us who have experienced trauma, emotions  tend to get stuck in the psychological reaction of fight (Hyperarousal) or flight (Acute stress) response.

What does this have to do with the text? After calming down my limbic system through deep breaths and activating my Wise mind I was able to see from a different perspective. Yes, I had been ruminating on a specific topic; but, they had been engaging in the topic. My awareness is that they were operating with their emotional mind due to personal stressors.

I kindly responded to the text with empathy. I can’t say they recognized the type of emotion they put into play. I can say, that tonight I can go to sleep knowing that I”m not too much. That I am okay. That people go through stuff and often don’t  integrate the emotional and rational mind. I am more cognizant to use the Wise mind especially when I am texting and to always offer compassion because I have not walked not walked in their shoes.

Carpe Diem,

Gloria